Origen’s examination of Jesus’s baptism in Against Celsus offers readers a particularly secure first footing for apprehending his sense of the Gospel narratives’ “mixed” character. That Jesus was baptized by John is hardly problematic, historically speaking. But the events narrated to have taken place directly after the baptism presented no less difficulty for readers in antiquity than they do for readers today. Origen preserves Celsus’s dismissal of the descent of the dove and voice from heaven as an obvious fiction. Origen, however, resists the judgment. Why? His reply to Celsus puts the whole complex of first principles detailed in Part I to work. According to Origen’s view, one can receive the narrative to be “true” inasmuch as it depicts, in figurative language drawn from prophetic literary tropes, Jesus’s own interior inspiration at the commencement of his public ministry. In short, the story narrates something real, something “historical” even, precisely insofar as it is entirely spiritual. The Evangelists then came to share in the same kind of vision Jesus is said to have had at his baptism and narrated “in figures” what they, too, had “perceived in their own understanding.”

Clare Johnson provides a careful discussion of the “other” six sacraments that the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church celebrate. Relying on the liturgical books themselves, she investigates their biblical roots, the logic behind their coherence, and their theological significance.

Harald Buchinger sketches the origins and complex evolutions of liturgies in Christian Antiquity. He focuses on patterns of worship and celebration developed in those times, underscoring how difficult it is to draw straightforward conclusions, mainly because of a paucity of sources.

Chapter 4 charts the provision and/or absence of instruction in Catholicism in the cultural worlds of the Pacific, which the bishops of Popayán framed as “spiritual pasture.” It begins with an analysis of the patterns of baptism and godparentage in the small city of Cartago, far from the gold mines where enslaved labourers shored up the white elite. The chapter examines two controversies that divided the mine and slave-owning elite and the upper echelons of the Church for decades; first, a debate over the stipend system in which slaveholders had to pay itinerant clergy to travel to the mines to administer the sacraments, and second, over mineros allowing enslaved people to work on holy days, despite myriad laws and papal bulls outlawing it. Ultimately, the remoteness of the mines from towns, and the disinterest of whites in settling there, meant that enslavers continued the long-held custom of enslaved people labouring on holy days and saving up gold dust to pacify them. Condemned by the bishops as “spiritual abandonment,” the custom helped to create conditions for the growth of the large free black population and perhaps the practice of their own religions that largely remain outside of view.

Leviticus has shaped both Jewish and Christian theology and practice over the centuries. The final chapter examines its influence in the rest of the Old Testament and into the Second Temple period and the New Testament. Levitical theology also influenced a Christian understanding of sacred space in church architecture as well as helping shape the Christian liturgical year.

This chapter examines rituals which took place after childbirth, uncovering evidence of baptisms, circumcisions, and even churching ceremonies that were held in domestic spaces. It suggests that a range of ceremonies we would now associate with public places of worship were frequently located in domestic spaces. It moves beyond studies which have argued that domestic baptism primarily took place in the home out of necessity, demonstrating that elective domestic baptism was more commonplace than has previously been acknowledged. Domestic ceremonies could also take place in networks of homes, being accommodated not in the family home, but in the home of a midwife, rabbi, or lay co-religionist. These ceremonies, and associated processions from the home to the place of public worship, marked the symbolic ending of the lying-in period, the departure of the mother from the home, and the welcoming of the child into the religious community. They emphasise the significance of the home as a setting of communal sociability and religious practice, and provide an important opportunity to consider the central place of the individual household within its congregation.

This chapter explores the spread of Christianity in Late Antiquity, focusing on archaeological evidence and methodological challenges in tracing its expansion. It examines how Christianity transitioned from a marginalised faith to an institutionalised religion, emphasising regional differences in its adoption across the Mediterranean and beyond. The chapter discusses a variety of materials, including early Christian inscriptions, artefacts, funerary practices and architectural remains such as churches, baptisteries and monasteries. Sites like the house church at Dura Europos and early Christian catacombs provide crucial insights into the religion’s early development. The study also highlights the role of missionary activity and the influence of state policies, particularly after Constantine’s legalisation of Christianity in the fourth century. A major argument is that Christianity spread unevenly, with urban centres adopting it earlier than rural areas. The transition was not uniform, as some regions experienced periods of resistance or syncretism with existing religious traditions. The chapter underscores the difficulty of identifying Christian material culture due to the overlap with pagan symbols. The chapter rounds off by calling for a more critical approach to interpreting archaeological evidence and suggests that future research should focus on regional case studies to refine our understanding of Christianity’s complex expansion.

Augustine’s preaching touches numerous aspects of his theology which are predominantly present in his most important treatises. The sacraments of the Church are treated in his controversies with heretics but they are also very much present in his sermons, where he teaches the sound doctrine of the Church and performs the Christian rites for the edification of the faithful. This chapter examines Augustine’s teaching on baptism and the Eucharist in his preaching. Having considered his definition of the sacraments in general in his preached works, it presents his teaching on the sacraments in his catechesis to the baptism candidates and to the newly baptised Christians of his congregation. The study further takes into consideration what Augustine says on baptism and the Eucharist in his sermons while addressing the problems of the Donatists and Pelagians. Augustine makes difficult theological concepts understandable to his flock by adapting his language to them.

Tertullian (ca. 170–225) was a Christian writer whose work provides some of the scant evidence we have for North African Christianity of that era. Little is known about his life, and details from later Christian writers like Jerome and Eusebius are dubious at best. What we can say with certainty is that Tertullian became increasingly rigorist over the course of his life – with respect to ethics, doctrine, and communal boundaries. Indeed, his increasing rigorism aligned him with a broader movement of rigorists in the North African Christian community, the Church of the New Prophecy (traditionally known as Montanism). This Christian revivalist movement began in Phrygia during the mid-second century but migrated to various regions throughout the Mediterranean basin, including Carthage. The Church of the New Prophecy understood the history of salvation as one marked by increasingly intense moral rigor: the Old Testament patriarchs were allowed conduct (polygamy, for example) that was prohibited by Jesus and the apostles in the New Testament. Indeed, God’s revelation continued in the oracular statements of “new prophets” like Montanus, Priscilla, and Maximilla, statements that were understood as equally authoritative utterances of the Spirit.

Chapter 4 discusses the sign of the cross, another gesture with a long history going back to the early church. In the Middle Ages the cross was believed to have power to protect against evil, and was widely used both as a gesture of everyday blessing and in rituals and charms of healing. After the Reformation its use was discouraged, but it survived in the Prayer Book rite of baptism, where the minister was instructed to trace a cross on the child’s forehead. This necessitated a radical transformation in its meaning, removing the associations with exorcism and purification and redefining it simply as a symbol of allegiance to Christ. Yet the belief in the apotropaic power of the cross persisted in early modern England and was reflected both officially, in the ritual of the royal touch, and unofficially, in the use of the gesture as a form of protection against witchcraft. Even among theologians who regarded the cross as symbolic, there was still a sense that it was not ‘merely’ symbolic but retained some kind of operative power to effect change.

This chapter explores sacramental fees in respect of baptisms, weddings, funerals, and other life cycle events. One of the most significant aspects of clerical income, these fees were equally a substantial, but vital, financial outlay for the laity, which had meanings that were social, cultural, religious, and personal. This chapter argues that those on either side of the transaction could often value the money involved very differently, a finding that has an important bearing on our understanding of where the balance of power lay between Church and people. This chapter will also emphasise, through its varied examples, that sacramental fees were highly regionalised and could operate very differently depending on the parish or diocese involved.

The dynamics of this movement, from un-faith to faith, has been considered in mythopoieic terms as operating by way of desire: the Christian mythos grasps the would-be Christian aesthetically before it convinces logically. There is nothing to say that this willing seduction by the Christian evangel must happen in the context of the Church or other than over the course of a long period of life. Nonetheless, the entrance into the mythic sensibility of Jesus’ life and the disruptive encounter with the parables’ disclosure of God is marked sacramentally by baptism, as the formal beginning of the Christian’s life in Christ and, through formation and sanctification, in some sense as Christ. It is a decisive response to the call of the beauty of the Christian mythos and the God to which it points. In what follows, I explore the mythic quality of names, unpacking some of the resonances that come with them. With this in mind, I examine the meaning of baptism as an entrance into Christ’s mythic sensibility by way of participation in his name and so his life. In this way, our myth-making can be said fully to participate in Christ, God incarnate, the archetype of our mythopoiesis.

Liturgical prayer plays a significant role in Anglo-Saxon healing remedies. It is not, contrary to recent studies on prayer, “relatively rare in medical remedies” (Thomas 2020: 224). Chapter 1, “Invoking Baptism,” argues that charms borrow crucial verbal and physical components of the baptismal liturgy in order to invoke the sacrament and its celebration. The most vital of the texts gathered as incantations is the Creed, which lies at the foundation of Baptism. Alongside the Creed appears the Pater Noster, anti-demonic utterances and exorcistic gestures, water and its use for washing, and the Sign of the Cross or Triune blessing. The allusive force of these liturgical artifacts is clear and strong enough, especially when they act as a collective, to evoke the liturgy. The act of recalling the liturgy within the performance arena results in the summoning of the liturgy’s power as a force for healing. Through the manipulation of baptismal forms, charms translate Baptism’s ability to heal the soul into the ability to heal the body. While charms do not exorcize the devil or baptize people in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as is done at Baptism, the sacrament is so essential to the people’s spiritual welfare that healers harness its associations and apply them medicinally in traditional remedies.

The book is devoted to the relationships between Nicene and Homoian Christianities in the context of broader religious and social changes in post-Roman societies from the end of the fourth to the seventh century. The main analytical and interpretative tools used in this study are religious conversion and ecclesiastical competition. It examines sources discussing Nicene–Homoian encounters in Vandal Africa, Gothic and Lombard Italy, Gaul, and Hispania – regions where the polities of the Goths, Suevi, Burgundians, and Franks emerged. It explores the extent to which these encounters were shaped by various religious policies and political decisions rooted in narratives of conversion and confessional rivalry. Through this analysis, the aim is to offer a nuanced interpretation of how Christians in the successor kingdoms handled religious dissent and how these actions manifested in social practices.

Oral witness is also the basis for the account of what Margery Baxter, charged with heresy at Norwich in 1428, has said and done. Her friends and neighbours are called to witness against her, and through their words we learn not only of the shocking things she has said which confirm her contempt for the Church, but details of the women’s lives.

The theme of safe-guarding, accidents and death is demonstrated by reference to the bishops’ advice regarding the protection of babies, and the necessary measures to be taken in case of illness and death, including emergency baptism and Caesarean section. Accidents often occurred, especially to children, and this might lead, in more fortunate cases, to healing and even revival by means of a miracle. Miracle accounts are balanced by coroners’ accounts which record the details of death, often by misadventure, as in the case here of a young woman scalded to death by falling into a brewer’s vat.